Canonizing the five orders: Sebastiano Serlio, 1537/1611

Serlio's five orders

Serlio, Sebastiano, 1475-1554; Peake, Robert, Sir, 1592?-1667. 1611. The fourth Booke. Rules of Masonrry, or Building with Stone or Bricke. made after the five maners or orders of Building, viz. Tuscana, Dorica, Ionica, Corinthia and Composita : and thereunto are added  examples of Antiquities; which, for the most part, agree with the instructions of Vitruvius.... Translated out of Italian into Dutch, and out of Dutch into English. London : Printed [by Simon Stafford and Thomas Snodham] for Robert Peake, ... 

Bibliographical reference: STC (2nd ed.) / 22235. Physical description: [3], 13, [1]; 26, [1]; [1], 73; 71, [1]; 16 leaves. Books 2-5 each have separate title page, foliation, and register. 

Source: Glasgow School of Art Library. Source: archive.org. Licence: CC by-nc-sa/2.5/Scotland. 

Commentary  

The works of the Mannerist architect Sebastiano Serlio (1475 – c. 1554), variously known as I sette libri dell'architettura ("Seven Books of Architecture") or Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva ("All the works on architecture and perspective"), were the first comprehensive treatise on architecture since Vitruvius and played a formative role in the reception of classical architecture north of the Alps. Most decisive of all was Serlio's role in canonizing the doctrine of the five orders of classical architecture: the Italian original of the engraving reproduced here is the first image in which all five are depicted together (Image 1).

The seven treatises which make up the work were originally published separately, starting (strangely) with book IV, treating the orders themselves, which appeared under the title Regole generali di architetura from the Venetian presses of Francesco Marcolini in 1537.  Frequently reprinted separately and together, and translated into Dutch, French, German, Spanish and finally English, their bibliography is extremely complicated: an excellent guide can be found here.  Serlio's letter to the reader (Image 2) outlines the contents of the series.  Most relevant for our purposes is that book 1 grounds the whole discipline of architecture in geometry and books 2 and 3 derive from geometry the principles for rendering buildings in plan (ichnographia), elevation (orthographia), and perspective (scaenographia).

As the title page of this first English translation indicates (Image 3), this work, like many other architectural trends, reached England via Flemish and Dutch intermediaries.  The STC's note recounts this transmission in more detail: 'The woodcuts for the title-page borders and illustrations were first used in the Antwerp edition of 1553. They were later used in the 1606 edition in Dutch printed in Amsterdam by C. Claeszoon, who also printed them on sheets otherwise blank and shipped them to Basel, where letterpress in German was overprinted in 1608, and to London for the present edition. Thomas Snodham printed only the bifolium following the first title page.'

For a modern introduction to the orders it is difficult to improve on John Summerson's classic book, The Classical Language of Architecture, ch. 1. For the sake of variety or revision, a textual description and a introductory video are available from the Kahn Academy.